Lecture 4: Derek's response

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You've heard the lectures. You've seen what our experts have to say. But what do you think? It's time for you to join the debate.

Our experts' responses

'We need shock as well as awe'
Joyce Fortune
'Fear can take many forms'
Derek Matravers
'Precaution and accountability are crucial in technological endeavour'
Tom Hewitt
'Things just got complicated again'
Nick Braithwaite

Derek's response to the fourth lecture of the 2005 series of Reith lectures

Fear can take many forms. We can be scared of things we know about, which we have good reason to be scared of (this tiger running towards me). We can be scared of things we do not know about (walking down the lane in the pitch black). In the past, fear of technology seemed to be of the first form more than the second. We knew about the bombs and the planes, and we had good reason to fear their being around.

I am simply open-mouthed in astonishment at some of the achievements Lord Brouers describes, up to and including working at the level of placing individual atoms. It is all too easy to think that if people are able to do that, they are able to do pretty much anything. This is one reason, I suppose, why it is easy to scare people about technology. There is enough of an object there (a self-replicating nano machine), for fear to take the first form but also elements of the second.

My idea of 10nm is not different from my idea of 100nm, or even many orders of magnitude of nm above that. By contrast, whether the nearest shop is 1 mile, 10 miles or 100 miles away is something I can grasp. Like the dark night, I suppose the best way to overcome fear is to find out if there is really is something out there worth being fearful about.

Content last updated: 26/04/2005